3 ms·

I very much see what you’re saying and think a lot of current data backs up your view. I do want to point out that Thomas Malthus in the 1700’s had a very simi

I very much see what you’re saying and think a lot of current data backs up your view. I do want to point out that Thomas Malthus in the 1700’s had a very similar argument though and “overpopulation” was to then as “global warming” is today in some (only some) regards. At the very least, as Daniel Patrick Moynihan said, “families are the platoons of society”. I never wanted kids, but as I got into my 30’s, you can feel something missing from life without kids, in the same way you can feel something missing without a long-term partner. I don’t want to make the mistake of forcing my American middle-class ideals of “family” onto others, but often progress in the world is achieved by the desire to make it better for our children, and not our future selves or some theoretical “other humans”.

conanbatt 8y ago
And Malthusian theory is a joke of economics from beginning to end.
rz2k 8y ago
Malthus had an interesting idea about some resources growing geometrically and others growing arithmetically. There wasn't real world data to back up the supposition. His conclusions seem to have been based on naive mathematical understandings, and misinterpreting processes that approximate logistic functions being at different stages of transitions. With changing marginal growth rates, even similar processes could appear to be fundamentally different from each other if they are in different stages. Climate science in this century is based on mathematically sophisticated models, and beyond the comparative theoretical rigor, they have been shown to have good predictive power.